Dissertations / Theses: 'Octavia E. Butler'

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Jones, Cassandra L. "FutureBodies: Octavia Butler as a Post-Colonial Cyborg Theorist." Bowling Green State University / OhioLINK, 2013. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=bgsu1368927282.

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Bailey, Constance R. ""Give me that old time religion" reclaiming slave religion in the future /." Diss., Columbia, Mo. : University of Missouri-Columbia, 2007. http://hdl.handle.net/10355/5078.

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Thesis (M.A.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 2007.
The entire dissertation/thesis text is included in the research.pdf file; the official abstract appears in the short.pdf file (which also appears in the research.pdf); a non-technical general description, or public abstract, appears in the public.pdf file. Title from title screen of research.pdf file (viewed on May 11, 2009) Includes bibliographical references.

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Graves, Robert Christopher Jason. "The art of heterotopian rhetoric a theory of science fiction as rhetorical discourse /." Bowling Green, Ohio : Bowling Green State University, 2009. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc%5Fnum=bgsu1245638686.

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Wood, Sarah. "The outsider within : explorations of the science fiction of Octavia Estelle Butler." Thesis, Birmingham City University, 2002. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.248497.

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A study of Octavia Butler has long been overdue. My aim is to rectify the paucity of critical commentary on her work, and to take into consideration the specificity of the African American woman. Examining how Butler's fiction interrogates the dual narratives of oppression that are an integral feature of black women's lives, I focus on six areas of Butler's fiction. Butler uses the conventions of science fiction to interrogate religious and secular mythologies that aim to limit and circumscribe the black woman; I explore how she amalgamates science fiction with other narrative modes such as fantasy, the historical novel, and the slave narrative. Linked to a consideration of Butler's use of science fiction is an exploration of the spaces she creates. I examine the categorisation of her work as either utopian or dystopian suggesting that Butler complicates this enterprise by questioning and extending its format. Her work rejects the hope and consolation offered by utopias; instead her fiction opens onto heterotopia, revelling in contradiction, difference, and change. Butler's fiction is preoccupied with the treatment of the black woman's bodily, material existence. She uses strategies of transformation to elude white patriarchal control, presenting us with grotesque figures and cyborg monsters that provide a parodic reversal of the images that have been apportioned to black men and women. Relations of self to its others are a fundamental aspect of Butler's work. However, rather than simply dramatising hierarchical, binary thinking and its subsequent deconstruction, her work offers alternative formations of self and other in which each term is able to recognise its other in their full subjectivity. Butler makes use of a linguistic heritage that is 'double-voiced'. The polyphonic construction of her texts, her use of Signifying, and the repetition and displacement that she enacts is indicative of much African American literature. Butler's reliance on religion in her work suggests a fundamental interrogation of Christianity. Her novels explore the complicated relationship that African Americans maintain toward the Judeo-Christian tradition; devices such as the introduction of African belief systems and the creation of an entirely new religion work to disrupt this. Articulating the view from the margins, Butler's fiction talks back to narratives of originary identity that posit the black woman as other, as inferior, and therefore, as subjugated to a white, male ideal.

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Davis, Ben Jr. "History, Race and Gender in the Science Fiction of Octavia Estelle Butler." The Ohio State University, 1992. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1392045358.

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Llewellyn, Jana Diemer. "Rape in feminist utopian and dystopian fiction Joanna Russ's The female man, Margaret Atwood's The handmaid's tale, and Octavia Butler's The parable of the sower and The parable of the talents /." Click here for download, 2006. http://wwwlib.umi.com/cr/villanova/fullcit?p1432523.

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Manis, Haley V. "Reconciling the Past in Octavia Butler's Kindred." Digital Commons @ East Tennessee State University, 2016. https://dc.etsu.edu/etd/3173.

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This thesis uses the observations of Nancy J. Peterson on historical wounds as a springboard to discuss Octavia Butler’s novel Kindred and its use of both white and black characters to reexamine the origins of the historical wounds and why they are so difficult to deal with even today. Other scholarly works will be used to further investigate the importance of each character in the story and what they mean to the wound itself. Specifically, Dana is analyzed alongside the other main characters: Rufus, Alice, and Kevin. Though Dana’s relationships with these characters, Kindred’s version of the past can be examined in order to determine why the past is so difficult to overcome and what the novel does to come to an understanding or reconciliation with it. This, in turn, allows for the present to be compared to Butler’s representation of the past as a way of reexamining history.

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Egbert, Teresa M. K. "Self through remembrance : identity construction and memory in the novels of Octavia E. Butler." Thesis, Bangor University, 2016. https://research.bangor.ac.uk/portal/en/theses/self-through-remembrance(370d2dc4-e0b2-4000-a0b8-aa696469142e).html.

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This thesis focuses on the roles of memory and identity in Octavia E. Butler’s novels: Kindred, Lilith’s Brood, Parable of the Sower, Parable of the Talents, and Fledgling. By using material from such diverse disciplines as philosophy, psychology, neuroscience, and sociology, I have treated the characters in Butler’s novels as individual selves; selves narrated by a living Butler. In current identity studies, the thought is that the self is constructed through narrative; therefore, what better way to analyze individual characters and communities than through the narrative provided by Butler. These selves are, of course, fictional, but how often are the selves we present, even temporarily, to the world in a given situation a fictional construction. We use many different critical tools to interpret and understand the world around us. While it is important to acknowledge the insightful implications of Butler’s work in regard to African American, gender, and feminist studies, there are unexplored approaches to her writing that can contribute to understanding the intricacies of Butler’s writing. This look at Butler’s texts shows that by opening up the ways we traditionally look at certain texts we can gain a more multi-faceted view of those texts, which are sometimes viewed through a type of tunnel vision. My discussion begins with a look at the theories used in the analyses of Butler’s novels. First, I look at Kindred and a discussion of individual identities and how they are deeply connected to group affiliations, as well as history. Then I move on to how group identities are created and influenced by collective memories in Lilith’s Brood. The Parable novels are the focus of my discussion on the construction of self through narrative. I end my analyses with a look at neuroscience and memory pathology through the amnestic protagonist of Fledgling.

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Campbell, Andrea Kate. "Narrating other natures a third wave ecocritical approach to Toni Morrison, Ruth Ozeki, and Octavia Butler /." Pullman, Wash. : Washington State University, 2010. http://www.dissertations.wsu.edu/Dissertations/Spring2010/a_campbell_042110.pdf.

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Lange, Bianca. "Beyond Human Displacement(s) : Spacetime Stories of Agency in Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler." Thesis, Linköpings universitet, Institutionen för kultur och samhälle, 2021. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:liu:diva-177210.

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In this thesis project, the aim is to explore displacements beyond the familiar usage in migration studies associated with ’human’ by using a new materialist/s understanding ofontology and agency. This approach opens the possibility to move beyond the understanding of displacements as referring only to human agency. The fictionalised story, Parable of theSower, is used in the thesis as the real-world ontological world-building storytelling and the questions that flow from the aim of this thesis is used as a guiding navigator within the mainstory to see what other stories emerges; The Earthseed Story, The More-Than-Human Storiesand The Human Stories. Displacement(s) beyond human agency from a new materialist outlook show the complexity and challenges of being interconnected and codependent in a world containing multiple stories that move in and out of spacetime refuturing. This occursboth as dystopia and utopia, as agency is in-the-making and ongoing reshaping of territorialization and deterritorialization making all-the-flesh moving boundaries of being displaced and in-place in a belongings-non-belongings continuum. For future research,multispecies displacement(s) is discussed as ongoing processes of both; dystopian and utopian storytelling, and the possibilities for refuturing shared worlds.

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Lewis, Noelle Elizabeth. "Situating Octavia Butler's Kindred as a Response to the Black Power and Black Studies Movements." Cleveland State University / OhioLINK, 2021. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=csu1629717405113431.

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Smith, Roslyn Nicole. "Medias Res, Temporal Double-Consciousness and Resistance in Octavia Butler's Kindred." unrestricted, 2007. http://etd.gsu.edu/theses/available/etd-11242007-230409/.

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Thesis (M.A.)--Georgia State University, 2007.
Title from file title page. Elizabeth West, committee chair; Layli Phillips, Kameelah Martin Samuel, committee members. Electronic text (52 p.) : digital, PDF file. Description based on contents viewed Jan. 30, 2008. Includes bibliographical references (p. 49-52).

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Williams, Algie Vincent. "Patterns in the Parables: Black Female Agency and Octavia Butler's Construction of Black Womanhood." Diss., Temple University Libraries, 2011. http://cdm16002.contentdm.oclc.org/cdm/ref/collection/p245801coll10/id/126489.

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English
Ph.D.
This project argues that Octavia's Butler's construction of the black woman characters is unique within the pantheon of late eighties African-American writers primarily through Butler's celebration of black female physicality and the agency the black body provides. The project is divided into five sections beginning with an intensive examination of Butler's ur-character, Anyanwu. This character is vitally important in discussing Butler's canon because she embodies the attributes and thematic issues that run throughout the author's work, specifically, the author's argument that black woman are provided opportunity through their bodies. Chapter two addresses the way black women's femininity is judged: their sexual activity. In this chapter, I explore one facet of Octavia Butler's narrative examination of sexual co-option and her subsequent implied challenge to definitions of feminine morality through the character Lilith who appears throughout Butler's Xenogenesis trilogy. Specifically, I explore this subject using Harriet Jacobs' seminal autobiography and slave narrative, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl as the prism in which I historically focus the conversation. In chapter three, I move the discussion into an exploration of black motherhood. Much like the aforementioned challenge to femininity vis-à-vis sexual morality, Octavia Butler often challenges and interrogates the traditional definition of motherhood, specifically, the relationship between mother and daughter. I will focus on different aspects of that mother/daughter relationship in two series, the Patternist sequence, which includes, in chronological order, Wild Seed, Mind of my Mind and Patternmaster. Chapter four discusses Butler's final novel, Fledgling, and how the novel's protagonist, Shori not only fits into the matrix of Butler characters but represents the culmination of the privileging of black female physicality that I observe in the author's entire canon. Specifically, while earlier characters are shown to create opportunities and venues of agency through their bodies, in Shori, Butler posits a character whose existence is predicated on its blackness and discusses how that purposeful racial construction leads to freedom.
Temple University--Theses

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Boulter, Amanda. "Speculative feminisms : the significance of feminist theory in the science fiction of Joanna Russ, James Tiptree Jr, and Octavia Butler." Thesis, University of Southampton, 1995. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.296179.

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LaFaver, Zakary H. "Back to the Future: Taking a Trip Back in Order to Move Forward in Octavia Butler’s Kindred." Digital Commons @ East Tennessee State University, 2014. https://dc.etsu.edu/honors/215.

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Slavery is something that cannot be taken lightly. Even Butler says no matter how harsh the slavery in her novel is, it does not compare to how gruesome actual slavery was: “As a matter of fact, one of the things I realized when I was reading the slave narrative…was that I was not going to be able to come anywhere near presenting slavery as it was. I was going to have to do a some-what cleaned-up version of slavery, or no one would be willing to read it” (qtd. in Kenan 497). Octavia Butler knew that if she presented slavery directly and in a way that called people, most likely white males, that there would not be an audience for the novel. Instead she had to present slavery as something society shaped, rather than a specific group of individuals. An analysis of Octavia Butler’s Kindred reveals that societal expectations alter the dynamics of such interracial relationships as those between Dana and Kevin, Dana and Rufus, and Rufus and Alice, determining their success or failure without regard to the foundations upon which these relationships were initially built.

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Vargas, Melissa. "Confronting environmental and social crises : Octavia E. Butler's critique of the spiritual roots of environmental injustice in her Parable novels /." [Boise, Idaho] : Boise State University, 2009. http://scholarworks.boisestate.edu/td/18/.

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Adolfsson, Linnea. "Genom våra ögon : En komparativ litteraturanalys av Margaret Atwoods The Handmaid’s Tale och Octavia E. Butlers Kindred, utifrån forskningsfältet kulturella minnesstudier." Thesis, Södertörns högskola, Litteraturvetenskap, 2018. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:sh:diva-37492.

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This essay’s primarily focus is on the common discourse about the persisting effects of the past in the present in Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale(1985)and Octavia E. Butler’s Kindred (1979).These novels are the testimonies of the protagonists Offred and Dana who shares their experience of traumatic violence and oppression. Dana, with her ability to time travel, will see her present time in clearer light as she experiences the life of a slave on an antebellum plantation. Offred, the Handmaiden owned by the totalitarian regime Gilead, portrays her contemporary life in parallel to remembering her former and thus describing Gilead’s increasing authority. Based on different theorists and concepts in the field of cultural memory studies, this essay examines the tension between memory and history, the distantness towards the past and the problematics with representations of traumatic events. As I argue that the voices of Dana and Offred calls attention to the importance of perspective and of sharing stories, they are also an act of hope, therapy and resistance; an act that also make possible a critique of the processes of the production of historical knowledge.

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Ivey, Adriane Louise. "Rewriting Christianity : African American women writers and the Bible /." view abstract or download file of text, 2000. http://wwwlib.umi.com/cr/uoregon/fullcit?p9987234.

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Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Oregon, 2000.
Typescript. Includes vita and abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 211-216). Also available for download via the World Wide Web; free to University of Oregon users.

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James, Lisa. "“To shape God, Shape Self”: The Political Manipulation of the Human Body and Reclamation of Space in Octavia E. Butler’s The Parable of the Sower." Thesis, Malmö universitet, Fakulteten för kultur och samhälle (KS), 2018. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:mau:diva-23673.

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This paper considers the role of the human body in Octavia E. Butler’s The Parable of theSower and the way it interacts with defined space to stage expressive forms of politicalopposition. Understanding the relationship between physical or metaphorical space and thecontradictions of the societies they encompass is crucial to deciphering Butler’s near-futuredystopia; a world where the problems of real-life Los Angeles and Southern California aredistorted into a gross carnivalesque of gender stereotypes, sociopolitical tensions, and vigilante warfare. This paper places a special emphasis on the areas of social and political stagnation found in Butler’s vision of near-future L.A., and analyses the dangers of clinging to archaic, patriarchal systems that no longer resonate with contemporary audiences. Focus is also placed on potential methods of resistance against oppressive social institutions, particularly exploring the limitations met by protagonist, Lauren Oya Olamina, in her attempts to voice concerns in a society where language is so nuanced by “traditional” gendered qualities that the female voice carries no political value. This papers also questions theories which promote violent confrontation as a means to social reform, disregarding collateral damage and victims of war in favour of insurgency. By exploring the movement of the human body away from defined space, this paper supports Butler’s notion of alternative prosocial action which celebrates the margins of society, positing a nurturing, constructive means to resist political opposition.

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Melkner, Moser Linda. "Character Narrators, the Implied Author, and the Authorial Audience: A Rhetorical and Ethical Reading of Octavia E. Butler’s Parable of the Talents." Thesis, Mälardalens högskola, Akademin för utbildning, kultur och kommunikation, 2020. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:mdh:diva-49262.

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This essay considers the interplay between character narrators, the implied author, and the authorial audience in Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Talents. The aim of the study was to investigate how narrators, the implied author, and readers position themselves in relation to each other and in relation to the novel’s ethical dimensions. The theoretical framework is based on James Phelan’s theories on the rhetorical and ethical aspects of fiction. The essay argues that the implied author’s communication to the authorial audience is one of the reasons that the novel, like its prequel Parable of the Sower, often succeeds to function as warnings to the audience of dangers ahead. This is especially true regarding one of the implied author’s most consistent messages to the audience throughout the Parable novels: every choice has consequences, and those consequences need to be considered when we decide how to act and react in different circumstances, both as individuals and as a society.

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Jones, Esther L. "Traveling discourses subjectivity, space and spirituality in black women's speculative fictions in the Americas /." Columbus, Ohio : Ohio State University, 2006. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc%5Fnum=osu1155665383.

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Graves, Robert Christopher. "The Art of Heterotopian Rhetoric: A Theory of Science Fiction as Rhetorical Discourse." Bowling Green State University / OhioLINK, 2009. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=bgsu1245638686.

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Ullrich-Ferguson, Loretta N. "The beauty of her survival : being Black and female in Meridian, The salt eaters, Kindred, and The bluest eye /." View online, 2008. http://repository.eiu.edu/theses/docs/32211131464907.pdf.

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Campbell, James. "Variable Otherness in Octavia Butler's Xenogenesis." Thesis, Linköpings universitet, Institutionen för kultur och samhälle, 2020. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:liu:diva-166051.

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This paper explores the Xenogenesis trilogy written by Octavia Bulter and how it presents Otherness as a concept. It provides several examples of otherness and additionally presents ideas of how it can be seen as something to be celebrated.

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Perez, Jeannina. "Matrilineal memories : revisionist histories in three contemporary Afro-American women's novels." Honors in the Major Thesis, University of Central Florida, 2008. http://digital.library.ucf.edu/cdm/ref/collection/ETH/id/1127.

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This item is only available in print in the UCF Libraries. If this is your Honors Thesis, you can help us make it available online for use by researchers around the world by following the instructions on the distribution consent form at http://library.ucf.edu/Systems/DigitalInitiatives/DigitalCollections/InternetDistributionConsentAgreementForm.pdf You may also contact the project coordinator, Kerri Bottorff, at kerri.bottorff@ucf.edu for more information.
Bachelors
Arts and Humanities
English

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Jones, Esther. "Traveling discourses: subjectivity, space and spirituality in black women’s speculative fictions in the Americas." The Ohio State University, 2006. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1155665383.

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Coleman, Darrell Edward. "THE TROPE OF DOMESTICITY: NEO- SLAVE NARRATIVE SATIRE ON PATRIARCHY AND BLACK MASCULINITY." Cleveland State University / OhioLINK, 2013. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=csu1371724364.

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28

Belle, Dixie-Ann. "Navigating the past, envisioning the future : Octavia Butler's heroines." FIU Digital Commons, 2004. http://digitalcommons.fiu.edu/etd/1484.

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In this thesis, I examined three novels by African American science fiction novelist Octavia Butler: Kindred (1979), Parable of the Sower (1994), Parable of the Talents (1998) and Dawn (1987). I analyzed Butler's belief that society has become too firmly attached to old customs and belief systems, initiating destructive, self-defeating cycles in our history. She looks to African American females to take up leadership roles and exact radical change to ensure society's continued survival as well as progress, acceptance and autonomy within our communities. I also established Butler's significant contributions to the African American literary canon as she examines the history of African Americans and speculates on their necessary roles of shaping the future of society.

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Payne, Kimberly Ellen. "Examining the female leader in Octavia Butler's dawn and Fledgling." DigitalCommons@Robert W. Woodruff Library, Atlanta University Center, 2011. http://digitalcommons.auctr.edu/dissertations/235.

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This study examines the prototypical female leader as constructed by Octavia Butler in her science fiction novels, Dawn and Fledgling. The premise of the study relates to the protagonists’ capacity to undergo arduous tasks in extraordinary circumstances so that they can ultimately lead their people into a revolutionized society. Overcoming enormous obstacles, including the rejection of the very people they must lead, proves that both protagonists, Lilith Ilypo, in Dawn, and Shori Matthews, in Fledgling, are the women of the future, created to lead human beings into a “brave new world.” The study further examines Butler’s portrayal of the “othemesses” that continue to plague societies, despite the societies’ “higher” evolution, and concludes that only through continuous compromise will the world become unified. Butler indicates that the onerous task of achieving this ultimate unification lies on the shoulders of women who will serve as, what I term, the future’s “female Adams.”

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Lehtosaari, E. (Eveliina). "Postapokalyptinen heeros:monomyytti ja sankaruuden toisintoistaminen Octavia E. Butlerin romaanissa Dawn." Bachelor's thesis, University of Oulu, 2018. http://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:oulu-201812183280.

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31

Evans, Taylor. "Genetic Engineering as Literary Praxis: A Study in Contemporary Literature." Master's thesis, University of Central Florida, 2012. http://digital.library.ucf.edu/cdm/ref/collection/ETD/id/5200.

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This thesis considers the understudied issue of genetic engineering as it has been deployed in the literature of the late 20th century. With reference to the concept of the enlightened gender hybridity of Cyborg theory and an eye to ecocritical implications, I read four texts: Joan Slonczewski's 1986 science fiction novel A Door Into Ocean, Octavia Butler's science fiction trilogy Lilith's Brood – originally released between 1987 and 1989 as Xenogenesis – Simon Mawer's 1997 literary novel Mendel's Dwarf, and the first two books in Margaret Atwood's speculative fiction MaddAddam series: 2003's Oryx and Crake and 2009's The Year Of the Flood. I argue that the inclusion of genetic engineering has changed as the technology moves from science fiction to science fact, moving from the fantastic to the mundane. Throughout its recent literary history, genetic engineering has played a role in complicating questions of sexuality, paternity, and the division between nature and culture. It has also come to represent a nexus of potential cultural change, one which stands to fulfill the dramatic hybridity Haraway rhapsodized in her “Cyborg Manifesto” while also containing the potential to disrupt the ecocritical conversation by destroying what we used to understand as nature. Despite their four different takes on the issue, each of the texts I read offers a complex vision of utopian hopes and apocalyptic fears. They agree that, for better or for worse, genetic engineering is forever changing both our world and ourselves.
ID: 031001413; System requirements: World Wide Web browser and PDF reader.; Mode of access: World Wide Web.; Adviser: James Campbell.; Title from PDF title page (viewed June 14, 2013).; Thesis (M.A.)--University of Central Florida, 2012.; Includes bibliographical references (p. 180-187).
M.A.
Masters
English
Arts and Humanities
English; Literary, Cultural, and Textual Studies

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32

Sautman, Matthew B. "Queering a Black Temporality in Octavia Butler's Kindred | Ruminations on a Black-Oriented Understanding of Time." Thesis, Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville, 2019. http://pqdtopen.proquest.com/#viewpdf?dispub=10974012.

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This study interrogates the resonances of queer utopianism in Octavia Butler’s presentation of time in Kindred in order to address the lack of existing scholarship on the novel’s relationship with queer temporality. To conduct this interrogation, I utilize the work of queer optimists like Muñoz, Berlant, and Ahmed to deconstruct the text phenomenologically in conjunction with queer pessimists like Halberstam and Edelman to nuance this analysis. To prevent this analysis from being overtaken by a white gaze, I also make use of Black scholars like Morrison, Sharpe, Cooper, Gates, and Collins. In my analysis, I divide Butler’s presentation of time into present, past, and future- whereas the present refers to the American Bicentennial and the cultural disconnect the protagonist Dana experiences in her relationship with her white husband, the past signals the pull of Antebellum era white supremacist patriarchy and Dana’s need to engage in archival work to reconstitute the history that has been denied to her, and the future implies a nebulousness that blurs both eras together and instills the novel’s ending with an ambiguity that lends itself to both pessimistic and optimistic readings. I emphasize how Butler positions Black temporality as a queer temporality in the novel that challenge readers’ own relationship with the dominant white patriarchal culture.

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Grewal, Harsimrat Kaur. "The creation of artistic space and literary possibility through speculative fiction in Octavia E. Butler's Kindred and Fledgling." Connect to Electronic Thesis (CONTENTdm), 2009. http://worldcat.org/oclc/460587554/viewonline.

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Kaiser, John William. "Paz's theory of self /." view abstract or download file of text, 2007. http://proquest.umi.com/pqdweb?did=1335359551&sid=1&Fmt=2&clientId=11238&RQT=309&VName=PQD.

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Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Oregon, 2007.
Typescript. Includes vita and abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 174-176). Also available for download via the World Wide Web; free to University of Oregon users.

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Calbert, Tonisha Marie. "(Re)Writing Apocalypse: Race, Gender, and Radical Change in Black Apocalyptic Fiction." The Ohio State University, 2020. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1593596843453299.

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Sellitti, Alicia Dawn. "Re-membering the normative black female body a critical investigation of race, gender and disability in Octavia Butler's Kindred and Toni Morrison's Sula /." Connect to Electronic Thesis (CONTENTdm), 2009. http://worldcat.org/oclc/463441904/viewonline.

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Karlsson, Josefine. "Counteracting racist attitudes and prejudices in the EFL-classroom: : An investigation on the effects of the social environment around the white character Rufus Weylin in the Antebellum South as depicted in Octavia E. Butler’s novel Kindred." Thesis, Linnéuniversitetet, Institutionen för språk (SPR), 2018. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:lnu:diva-72016.

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The multicultural classroom is becoming more prominent in Sweden. Students from different cultures and ethnicities meet to learn in the same environment. In a changing society, the need to develop acceptance towards others is more important than ever. Thus, in this essay, post-colonial and social influence theories have been applied to the analysis of Octavia E. Butler’s novel Kindred. This essay argues that by integrating post-colonial literature in the EFL- classroom, students can gain deeper intercultural knowledge and learn to understand the power of the social environment concerning its influential effects on people’s racial attitudes and prejudices.

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Benavente, Gabriel. "Reimagining Movements: Towards a Queer Ecology and Trans/Black Feminism." FIU Digital Commons, 2017. http://digitalcommons.fiu.edu/etd/3186.

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This thesis seeks to bridge feminist and environmental justice movements through the literature of black women writers. These writers create an archive that contribute towards the liberation of queer, black, and transgender peoples. In the novel Parable of the Talents, Octavia Butler constructs a world that highlights the pervasive effects of climate change. As climate change expedites poverty, Americans begin to blame others, such as queer people, for the destruction of their country. Butler depicts the dangers of fundamentalism as a response to climate change, highlighting an imperative for a movement that does not romanticize the environment as heteronormative, but a space where queers can flourish. Just as queer and environmental justice movements are codependent on one another, feminist movements cannot be separate from black and transgender liberation. This thesis will demonstrate how writers, such as Audre Lorde, Toni Morrison, Angela Davis, and Janet Mock, help establish a feminism that resists the erasure of black and transgender people.

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McGarity, Kristin Anne. "In memoriam Octavia Butler: for chorus, orchestra, and speaker." 2009. http://hdl.handle.net/2152/6693.

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Octavia E. Butler (1947-2006), the first major African-American woman science fiction writer and the only science-fiction author to win the MacArthur "genius" grant, died from an accidental fall in February 2006. She is remembered for her work, which clearly fits into the science-fiction tradition, with imagined near- and far-future technologies, telepathy, aliens, space travel, and time travel. Yet Butler's stories are not clichéd space operas featuring white men in spaceship battles. Whatever the near- or far-future setting, the challenging themes that form the substance of Butler's writing are always power, dominance, slavery, and the complexity of human relationships. Butler's best-known works include the Parable novels (Parable of the Sower and Parable of the Talents), in which the main character Lauren Olamina writes a series of verses that become a new religion in an imagined near-future dystopian version of the United States. This dissertation is a composition for SATB chorus, orchestra, and speaker based on these verses and on quotations from Butler herself describing how she became a writer and the genesis of the Parable series. The musical setting of these quotations highlights parallels between Butler's novels and her own life. In the accompanying paper I analyze my process of extrapolating selected themes from Butler's life and work. My intent is to demonstrate how these themes are interwoven into the musical setting at many levels, and to show how the particular quotations and themes I chose to set musically reveal Butler's insights about present-day human experience on a larger scale.
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Boccara, Ella. "Female identity and race in contemporary Afrofuturist narratives : "Wild seed" by Octavia E. Butler." Thesis, 2020. http://hdl.handle.net/1866/24182.

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Ce mémoire explore les notions de race et d’identité féminine à travers le récit afro-futuriste Wild Seed d’Octavia Butler. Décrit comme le nouveau genre de la ‘fiction spéculative’ par les théoriciens universitaires, l’afro-futurisme joint le spéculatif au réalisme afin d’explorer les conjonctions entre les diasporas africaines, l’écriture africaine américaine et les technologies modernes. Cette thèse propose une analyse critique et théorique du roman Wild Seed d’Octavia Butler, en se concentrant particulièrement sur ses divers concepts et ses allégories historiques. Plutôt que d’ignorer le rôle que jouent les notions de race et d’identité dans la science-fiction, Butler les met en avant dans le roman Wild Seed et les questionne en adressant des sujets tels que l’après-colonisation, la tyrannie intime, l’hybridité, la différence, l’altérité, et l’identité. Dans le premier chapitre, j’examinerais tout particulièrement l’influence de la domination de la colonisation patriarcale occidental et l’occidentalisation des africains-américains. Puis, à travers les thèmes du trauma intergénérationnel lié à l’esclavage et de l'objectification des corps noirs qui apparaissent dans le texte, j’analyserais les contradictions présentent dans la lutte des Noirs pour la liberté, la race, et l’incarnation raciale. Le second chapitre explorera les différentes formes de résistance, dramatisées à travers le personnage d’Anyanwu, ainsi que l’utilisation des notions d’espace et de temporalité comme techniques pour comprendre et associer ensemble les problèmes d’incarnation et d’identité des genres: afin de survivre à la domination et au pouvoir perpétrés par la société patriarcale de Doro, Anyanwu doit résister, redéfinir, et reconquérir son identité.
This thesis explores the notions of race and female identity through Octavia Butler’s Afrofuturist narrative Wild Seed. Described as a new genre of ‘speculative fiction’ by scholars, Afrofuturism converges speculative and realist modes in order to explore conjunctions between African diasporas, African American writing, and modern technologies. This thesis provides a theoretical and critical analysis of Octavia Butler’s Wild Seed, with a particular focus on its various concepts and historical allegories. The novel Wild Seed addresses such topics as post-colonialization, intimate tyranny, hybridity, difference, otherness, and identity, questioning and foregrounding the role race and identity plays in science fiction. In the first Chapter, I will specifically examine the influence of dominant patriarchal Western colonization and its Westernization of African Americans. Then I will analyze the contradictions within the black struggle for freedom, race, and racialized embodiment through the themes of the intergenerational trauma of slavery and the objectification of black bodies found in the text. The second chapter will explore the different forms of resistance dramatized through Anyanwu’s character, as well as the use of space and temporality as a process to understand and connect the issues of embodiment and gender identity: Anyanwu has to resist, redefine, and reclaim her identity in order to survive the domination and power of Doro’s future patriarchal and biogenetically altered society.

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Korejtková, Adéla. "Hybridní těla a hybridní identity v dílech Octavie Butlerové." Master's thesis, 2016. http://www.nusl.cz/ntk/nusl-345650.

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The thesis explores the theme of hybridity in Octavia Butler's Xenogenesis trilogy and in her last novel, Fledgling, which both deal with complex relationships between humans and a different species. The main focus is on the characters of mixed origin - offspring of two distinct species and beings whose existence is a result of genetic experiments. These individuals occupy a metaphorical "in-between" space where cultural, racial, sexual and other boundaries meet and blur. The theoretical framework follows two sets of ideas - Homi Bhabha's notion of hybridity and the so-called Third Space, and Donna Haraway's cyborg figure. The second chapter of the thesis is centered on the origins and development of the concept of hybridity and its current use in postcolonial discourse. Furthermore, it introduces the most relevant ideas from Bhabha's The Location of Culture and Haraway's "A Cyborg Manifesto" and compares them. The following two chapters are mainly devoted to Butler's hybrid characters, Akin and Jodahs from Xenogenesis and Shori, the protagonist of Fledgling. This section analyses, among other issues, their physical features and special skills connected with hybridity, the construction of their identity, their relationship with others and their relation to the clash between different species and...

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Favreau, Alyssa. "Galactic ecofeminism and posthuman transcendence : the tentative utopias of Octavia E. Butler's Lilith's Brood." Thèse, 2018. http://hdl.handle.net/1866/21252.

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Donaldson, Eileen. "A chronology of her own : the treatment of time in selected works of second wave feminist speculative fiction." Thesis, 2012. http://hdl.handle.net/2263/28698.

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Prior to the 1960s and 1970s most studies of time undertaken in the West treated it as an objective phenomenon, devoid of ideological inscriptions. Second Wave feminists challenged this view, arguing that time is not neutral but one of the mechanisms used by patriarchal cultures to subjugate women. The argument was that temporal modes, like everything else in patriarchal reality, had been gendered. Linear time was masculine because it was associated with the male-dominated public domain in which science, commerce and production took place. The natural world, mysticism, the private domain, domesticity and women were relegated to a cyclical temporality that was gendered feminine. In her paper “Women’s Time” Julia Kristeva suggests that three generations of feminism can be identified according to the attitude each takes to time. I use her hypothesis as a framework in order to examine the positions regarding time taken up by various feminist groups during the Second Wave. I identify liberal and socialist feminisms with Kristeva’s first generation because they criticised the fact that women had been left out of linear time and the public domain and demanded that women be reinserted into linear time. I argue that Kristeva’s second generation is represented by cultural feminists of the Second Wave who recognised an alternative women’s time and suggested that women celebrate their connection with it, defying the authority of patrilinear time to dismiss “women’s experiences”. I then propose that the perspective of Kristeva’s third generation may be identified in the work of six authors of feminist speculative fiction who were writing during the Second Wave; this perspective entails a synthesis of the two previous opposing viewpoints. This can be identified in these novels because the female protagonists are first empowered through their access to an alternative (“feminine”) temporal space that subverts the authority of patriarchal culture embedded in linear time and then they move back into patrilinear time, claiming active roles and challenging patriarchal ideology. In this thesis I thus focus on the feminist examination of time during the Second Wave and consider how it was reflected in selected works of feminist speculative fiction written at the time. The authors discussed are Octavia Butler, Marge Piercy, Joanna Russ, Ursula Le Guin, Tanith Lee and Sheri Tepper.
Thesis (DLitt)--University of Pretoria, 2012.
English
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Ling-LingChang and 張玲綾. "It’s Not over Yet: Unending Stories in Octavia Butler’s Kindred." Thesis, 2017. http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/4s2qd7.

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Payam, Askari Fahimeh. "Shapeshifting in Octavia Butler’s Wild Seed and Nnedi Okorafor’s Lagoon." Thèse, 2019. http://hdl.handle.net/1866/22486.

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Yueh, Hong-Fu, and 樂竑甫. "Unstable Body and Fluid Gender in Octavia E. Butler’s Lilith’s Brood." Thesis, 2007. http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/37591230164931055088.

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碩士
國立中正大學
外國文學所
95
In the Octavia E. Butler’s Lilith’s Brood, Butler creates brand new human beings whose gender is fluid. However, new human beings’ fluid gender troubles human resisters in the story because most of them still think gender has to be stable. However, what makes new human beings’ gender fluid? In order to answer this question, this thesis divides into five parts. In the first part, the background of story and author will be introduced. In second part, the discussion focuses on human resisters’ gender is hailed by the interpellation of stable gender and as hailed subjects, they will regulate every subject whose gender is different from theirs. In the third part, by presenting interpellation of stable gender and medical knowledge which support the very interpellation cannot hail or stabilize new human beings’ gender, new human beings’ fluid gender will be shown. In the fourth part, the discussion will reveal that new human beings’ fluid gender is the caused by their unstable body. In the discussion, the youngest generation of new human beings’ unstable body and fluid gender will be examined. In the final part, it will summary the points made in former parts.

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Roriz, Camila Moreira Santana. "Formas de vida: (arte como matéria vivida)." Master's thesis, 2019. http://hdl.handle.net/10451/43136.

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In an attempt to talk about my experimental artistic process I found inspiration from some artists and authors: Donna Haraway, biologist and philosopher, who believes in the power of storytelling as a possibility to reinvent ways of living in a damaged world; Octavia Butler, author of science fiction books that raise questions about patterns that are shown to us throughout our Western society. Maria Lassnig, is a painter who experimented with the artistic movements of her time but even so allowed herself to tell her own internal narratives. And other artists who continue to resist and make art even with all the adversities that consist of being in this world today. Thus, i begin with a research about the different forms of life, a desire to unveil the constant and diverse concepts that are created to define a living being. I made some questions about organic life and artificial life. The differences we constantly create between what is considered organic for what would be mechanical, technological. From this idea a curiosity emerged in thinking of forms of mutation, the human being as a network of chemical reactions that has as final result what we see superficially. I write about some artists who seek new visualities, which contrast what has been determined to us as standard or normal. During the process of investigation I looked for ways to translate this theoretical interest with a visual work thought through the pictorial essence, which has been used for many centuries as illustration of narratives. I use the structure of the painting, like the composition of colors and shapes, and I transport it to 3D image editing software and virtual reality applications to materialize my projects. I refer also to electronic games as a potent learning possibility and as a new way of making art.

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Jin-shiuYin and 殷進栩. "Return to the Southern Plantation: the Unforgotten Family Histories in Octavia Butler’s Kindred." Thesis, 2017. http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/7u8248.

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Pan, Ying-fan, and 潘盈方. "Crossing Boundaries: the Cybernetic Transformations of Human Body and Community in Octavia Butler's Xenogenesis." Thesis, 2012. http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/65148833058488344850.

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碩士
高雄師範大學
英語學系
100
Depicting the constant conflicts between human beings and aliens, Octavia E. Butler points out the root of the problem in contemporary human society in her Xenogenesis Trilogy. Presenting to us that hierarchy as the inherent nature of human beings may lead to destruction and devastation to human civilization, Butler offers us a solution to the possible nightmarish future: we should embrace difference and change. The thesis aims to explore the issue of transgressing boundaries manifested in Butler’s Xenogenesis Trilogy from the posthuman perspective. While the traditional hierarchies tend to discourage and even obstruct the development of new subjectivity, the posthuman perspective propels us to re-consider what “body” is and what “human” is. With its focus on the fluidity and flexibility of human subjectivity, the conception of the poshuman resonates with that of boundary-crossing in the Xenogenesis trilogy. Beginning with the transformation of the human body, the story presents us an image of the cyborg. The formation of the cyborg, or changes of the body, leads to the re-formation of the social structures. Based on the comparison between critical and textual evidences, the core of boundary-crossing would be presented in this thesis.

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Wu, Tai-Yi, and 吳太一. "Utopia and Memory: Octavia E. Butler’s Parable of the Sower and Parable of the Talents." Thesis, 2019. http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/z8h8fk.

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碩士
國立臺灣大學
外國語文學研究所
107
This thesis ventures to delve into the intersection of utopia and memory, and how the past, the present, and the future are closely intertwined. Memory is not simply retrospective, but can also be prospective. Vincent Geoghegan proposes a term “remembering the future,” which entails that “past memories will have a constitutive role in the forming of … present and future perceptions,” and that we “enter the future with a body of assumptions and preoccupation located in memory” (54). This thesis takes Geoghegan’s theory of utopian memory as a point of departure to look into various utopian projects in American novelist Octavia E. Butler’s Parable of the Sower and Parable of the Talents. First, Robledo and Christian America are investigated using Zygmunt Bauman’s notion of retrotopia and Svetlana Boym’s distinction of different kinds of nostalgia. Both cases show that retrotopia and restorative nostalgia prove to be harmful, for they keep people from moving beyond the past. Second, Acorn is examined as an everyday utopia, as defined by Davina Cooper. The members of Acorn move away from the past and live in the present, but they are ultimately unable to orient towards the future. Third, Earthseed, which reflects the idea of utopia as process, is analyzed in terms of hyperempathy syndrome and the Destiny. The former can be regarded as body memory, while the latter has a forward-looking dimension that allows Butler to reshape memory and to reimagine conventional elements of utopia. These three kinds of utopian projects come together in an overarching theme of memory, and Earthseed can be considered as the most viable among them.

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Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Octavia E. Butler'

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